In 2023, Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, an action that would make it the nation’s first-ever religious charter school. It would be governed by Catholic religious doctrine in its syllabus, operations and employment practices. It would use taxpayer dollars to pay for religious instruction. And it could turn away students and staff if their faith or identity conflict with Catholic beliefs. 

Here’s the issue: Charter schools were created to be public schools. They are open to all students, from every background, tradition and faith community. They are publicly funded and tuition-free. And they are secular. 

That’s not an arbitrary distinction – it’s a constitutional one, grounded in the law and embedded in charter schools’ very design. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause bars the government from promoting or endorsing any religion through public spaces or institutions. This foundational rule has ensured that students of all backgrounds can access public schools. It does not stifle religious expression — the Constitution fully protects this freedom, and religious education is available in other venues. Personally, I was, in fact, educated at Jesuit Catholic schools for my entire academic career. 

Parochial education has long been an accepted and important part of the education ecosystem, serving a variety of students and often filling an important need. Religiously affiliated schools have a long history of educating and caring for children who are new to this country and underserved, and supporting families who are overlooked. But promoting the exclusive teachings of a specific religion with public funds in a public school violates a clear constitutional principle. 

The issue isn’t only a legal matter; it’s about the character of public education itself. Muddying the boundary between public and religious institutions would undercut a fundamental commitment made by the nation’s public charter schools: that they are accessible to every student. It would undermine legal protections that keep public services available to the public. 

Rather than creating more opportunities for America’s students, it would constrict opportunities for a high-quality education, especially in states that are hostile toward charters or alternative public school models. Legislative bodies could seek to eliminate funding for all unique school types if the court decision forced them to fund religious schools operating with public dollars. This would curtail or dismantle strong independent schools, 30-year-old public charter schools and schools with unique programs designed for special populations.

As executive director of the DC Charter School Alliance, and a long-time public charter school advocate, I’ve seen the importance of public charter schools firsthand. Here in the District of Columbia, charter schools serve nearly half of the public school students in the city. Outstanding educators from all walks of life teach a wide range of subjects with enthusiasm and expertise to prepare young people for success. Our students bring to the classroom an incredible range of experiences, including faith traditions. And every student, family and faculty member is welcome. D.C.’s charter schools reflect a core American value: the promise of a high-quality public education for all. 

The justices of the Supreme Court face a clear and critical choice: They can bolster that promise, or they can tear it down. If the court allows a religious school to operate with public funds, there is no doubt that it will open the floodgates to other proposals across the country. Taxpayers could be forced to foot the bill for countless new and converted schools, draining resources from an already financially strapped education system. True public charter schools — the ones committed to high standards, positive results and opportunity for all — could bear the cost. And the students who rely on them could suffer. 

Public education is one of America’s most vital institutions. It offers all children, no matter their background or beliefs, access to free, high-quality learning. Charter schools play an essential role in making that promise real. But allowing a religious school to operate with public funds turns public education into something much more restrictive, dismantling its very foundation.

The court must reaffirm this indisputable truth: Public schools should remain public — and open to all. 

The last two weeks of April featured a rare doubleheader at the Supreme Court, as the justices took up two cases dealing with the intersection of religious liberty and public education. In both instances, plausible outcomes could thrust the courts ever deeper into the daily operation of U.S. schools, with attendant line-drawing, hair-splitting and interference likely for decades to come.

But the court has a way out of that thicket that would respect the secular nature of public schooling while guaranteeing parents their right of free expression. And that is to declare that states must find a way to provide taxpayer support for a pluralistic education system, one that funds religious schools in addition to the public schools — though not necessarily through the charter school mechanism.

This approach might sound like judicial overreach, but it is much preferable to the road we are otherwise heading down — one that will bring endless lawsuits about the rules surrounding charter schools, as well as litigation to determine when and how religious parents can opt their children out of lessons and programs that public schools mandate but that parents find objectionable. The latter issue was  at play in last week’s case, . The particular question was whether the school district in Montgomery County, Maryland, violated parents’ First Amendment rights by not letting them opt their children out of early elementary lessons on LGBTQ-themed storybooks — books that clearly carry messages at odds with their religious views.

That question is easy, though, compared to others that might follow, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson . For example, do parents of faith have the right to insist that their children not be assigned to gay teachers? To pull their high school students out of biology classes that discuss human evolution? Is it feasible, much less educationally advisable, to turn public schools into an a la carte experience?

Imagine that last week’s case had been about Montgomery County, Ohio, instead of Montgomery County, Maryland. There, religious parents have the ability to send their children to private schools — including religious schools — at , thanks to Ohio’s multi-faceted school-choice options. That’s not the case in Montgomery County, Maryland, where district schools are the only taxpayer-funded options. (Someone might inform , who asserted that religious parents could always opt for religious private schools instead of public ones, without acknowledging the burden of paying for tuition.)

For states with private school choice programs, the courts could show more deference to public school districts, knowing that religious parents have the option of exiting those schools entirely, rather than on a lesson-by-lesson basis. And to do so with the support of government funding.

Such an approach would also be helpful when it comes to the issue at play in the other half of the double-header, Wednesday’s St. Isidore of Seville v. Drummond. Here, the question is whether the state of Oklahoma, and the with charter school laws, discriminate against nonprofit religious organizations by prohibiting them from applying to create and run public charter schools aligned with their faiths.

This case hinges on whether charter schools are “state actors,” i.e., public schools. If so, they clearly trigger the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and cannot be religious. The contrary view is that charter schools should be considered private, in which case Oklahoma is indeed guilty of “rank discrimination,” as Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it, by not allowing religious entities to win contracts to run faith-based schools — in the same way that it would be unfair to disallow Catholic Charities from managing government-funded food banks or foster care services.

That may be so. Yet for the court to mandate that states support religious charter schools against their will would be to create massive upheaval in the charter sector. After all, federal and state law and practice for 30 years have rested on the assertion that charter schools are, in fact, public schools, and therefore state actors. For example, they must accept all applicants and, if oversubscribed, use lotteries, not selective admissions, to determine who will attend.  Could states require religious charter schools to abide by these same rules? Meaning that, for example, they would have to admit students and families who don’t adhere to their faith? What about LGBTQ children or families? (St. Isidore claims it will accept everyone.) What’s more, a determination that charter schools are private may mean — especially in blue states — that they’ll no longer be eligible for state formula funding, .

But here, too, the court could take a wider view. It could rule that so long as states provide some vehicle to support religious education, they would not be required to do so through the charter school mechanism specifically. In the case of Saint Isidore, it could simply participate in Oklahoma’s existing . Indeed, Jackson wondered aloud about Oklahoma’s voucher program — perhaps an indication that she’s already seeing the big picture.

Mandating that states provide public support for religious schools might sound like a long shot. No doubt it would lead to massive bellyaching in blue states and from the usual suspects in teachers unions and the rest of the education blob. But beyond being a grand slam for kids and families, it might be the best way to avoid constant judicial micromanagement of the public schools for decades to come.

“I can’t wait to be sued,” he told attendees at a GOP fundraiser. 

Within days, nine families with children in Louisiana schools delivered. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church & State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the plaintiffs include atheists, Jews, and Presbyterian and Unitarian Universalist clergy, among others.

“All of these students will be forcibly subjected to scriptural dictates, day in and day out, including: ‘I AM the LORD thy God’; ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’; ‘Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain’; ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy’; and ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,’ ” . “This simply cannot be reconciled with the fundamental religious-freedom principles that animated the founding of our nation.”

The first mandate of its kind in more than 40 years, calls for classroom posters at least 11 by 14 inches in size displaying a state-approved version of the biblical laws in a “large, easily readable font,” accompanied by a statement describing “the history of the 10 Commandments in American Public Education.”

“If you want to respect the rule of law, you got to start from the original law given, which was Moses’,” Landry said. “He got his commandments from God.” 

Legal and political analysts say they have no doubt Landry wants students to absorb the religious directives, but they also believe the law was crafted with a larger goal: to provoke a suit that could tee up a case that would allow the U.S. Supreme Court — whose conservative supermajority dispensed with precedent when it overturned Roe vs. Wade — to reinterpret the longstanding constitutional separation of church and state. 

Far-right lawmakers in Texas, Utah and South Carolina this year considered bills that would have required classroom displays of the commandments, part of a wave of legislation that followed a 2022 Supreme Court ruling allowing a high school football coach to pray with his team on the field. 

Shortly after the Louisiana lawsuit was filed, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters ordered schools in his state to begin teaching the Bible, “which includes the Ten Commandments,” in classrooms. “Immediate and strict compliance is expected,” his order warned. 

Here is the memo:

Superintendent Walters announced this implementation will be effective immediately to “specified grade levels”

— KOCOKilee (@KOCOKileeThomas)

Walters’s order came two days after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the Catholic archdiocese’s plan to open a religious charter school violated the state and U.S. constitutions as well as a law requiring Oklahoma public schools to be nonsectarian.    

The Louisiana suit was filed in federal court in Baton Rouge. Defendants include state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, and five school districts, including those in Orleans and East Baton Rouge parishes. The plaintiffs want the court to stop the law from going into effect in January while the case proceeds. 

They have asked the court to simply declare the law unconstitutional. Whatever the outcome at the local level, the case will almost certainly be appealed to the 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court has taken up a number of 5th Circuit decisions in recent years.    

Here are four things to know about the law and the suit seeking to have it thrown out. 

Why Louisiana, and why now? 

Until this year, Louisiana had a term-limited Democratic governor, John bel Edwards, who blocked many — but not all — of the religious right’s legislative salvos. With Republican supermajorities in both legislative chambers, Landry’s election last fall cemented a political trifecta for GOP control.

Landry has moved swiftly. In addition to the Ten Commandments edict, he has enacted laws declaring abortion pills dangerous controlled substances, expanding execution methods, allowing concealed carry of a gun without a permit, enabling judges to order the castration of child rapists and empowering law enforcement officers to arrest migrants who enter the country illegally. 

Other education-related measures moving through the Louisiana statehouse on his watch include a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, restrictions on students’ use of preferred pronouns and names in schools and a requirement that students use school bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their sex assigned at birth.

Landry is one of eight governors suing the Biden administration over its guidance on Title IX’s prohibition against gender discrimination. In June, in a dispute headed to the 5th Circuit, a federal judge sided with Landry in ruling that the guidance may not be enforced while the Title IX suit is pending. 

Some political commentators believe the governor has tapped pent-up Republican demand for more conservative laws, while others point to Landry’s vault to national prominence as possibly positioning him for higher office. His declaration that he hoped to be sued over the Ten Commandments law was part of a keynote he delivered at a political fundraiser in Tennessee.  

But perhaps most significant, Louisiana is in the 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Why the 5th Circuit? 

During the 1960s and ’70s, the 5th Circuit was known for its staunch defense of civil rights laws in the six Deep South states it then covered. As the population in those states grew, however, the court’s mushrooming docket became unwieldy. Congress worried that into two appellate courts would weaken anti-discrimination efforts. 

In 1981, Congress carved off the circuit’s three easternmost states — Alabama, Georgia and Florida — creating the 11th Circuit. Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana remained in a reorganized 5th Circuit, rounded out by numerous judges appointed by then-President Jimmy Carter. 

Now, however, the 5th has become the in the nation. Twelve of its 17 active judges are Republican appointees, six of them nominated by former President Donald Trump. The circuit has since become a drafted by the conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom and others hoping to advance cases — most notably the Mississippi suit that overturned abortion rights, Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — that could allow the U.S. Supreme Court to shift precedents.

Recently, though, a number of decisions coming out of the circuit have proven too ideological for the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, which this term allowing domestic abusers to own guns and outlawing mifepristone, a legal drug used in medical abortions.  

Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law “may be a bridge too far” for Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts, says Lawrence Moore, a Jesuit priest and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. When the high court took up a Kentucky case involving the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms 44 years ago, he notes, it ruled the practice unconstitutional without so much as hearing oral arguments.  

Why does the law require specific words be used to express the commandments?

In mandating the use of a particular, Protestant version, critics say, the law’s proponents are essentially daring the courts to reinterpret the opening line of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. “

The Louisiana law, Moore says, goes straight to the heart of tension that has always existed in First Amendment cases: the Constitution’s guarantee of the right of free religious expression and its prohibition against the creation of a state religion — the Establishment Clause. As willing to overturn longstanding precedent as it has been, he says, this court may see the establishment of state religion — in this case, Protestantism — as curtailing religious liberty by allowing Louisiana’s government to pressure students to not express their own, differing, religious beliefs. 

A number of faiths indeed uphold the tenets of the Ten Commandments, but in various ways. Catholics — believed to be Louisiana’s largest faith group — Jews and Protestants differ in how they number, organize and translate the commandments from Hebrew to English. 

What is the rationale for the law’s assertion that the Ten Commandments play a historical role in public education?

In , the 1980 case that set the existing precedent, the high court found that displaying the commandments in classrooms served no secular purpose. In drawing a line back to the founders — and beyond, to Moses — the groups seeking a new interpretation of the Establishment Clause want to frame the practice as a history lesson.

“Landry and others are saying these are historically relevant ideas,” says Brian Brox, a professor of political science at Tulane University. 

The plaintiffs suing to overturn the law accuse Louisiana officials of rewriting American history in an attempt to create a nexus between Christianity and the classroom. In their complaint, they note that the statute asserts that “James Madison, the fourth President of the United States of America, stated that ‘(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation . . . upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the 10 Commandments.’ ” 

“In fact, the quotation is fabricated,” the complaint asserts. “Madison never said this in any of his public or private writings or in any of his speeches.” 

In fact, Madison — the Constitution’s primary author — wrote, “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

Christian nationalists, Moore says, “hold that we are a Christian nation. I don’t think that’s true at all — and I say that as a Roman Catholic priest.” 

The Louisiana law also says schools may choose to display the Mayflower Compact — a statement signed during the trans-Atlantic voyage by Protestant separatists who opposed the Church of England — and the Declaration of Independence. 

They can also post the Northwest Ordinance, a 1787 law that established the Northwest Territory and encouraged the creation of schools: “Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” 

A spate of policies banning books and tamping down teachings on race and gender proliferated nationwide in 2021 and 2022 — but are those rules actually legal? The American Civil Liberties Union has launched a multi-state effort to find out by challenging them in court.

The approach includes a mixture of lawsuits, public records requests and legal letters alleging the right-wing rules violate the First Amendment and other constitutional protections.

In Mississippi, a letter from the organization helped reverse a mayor’s decision to withhold $110,000 in funding from a local library until librarians removed LGBTQ literature. In Virginia, the ACLU urged a state court to dismiss a ban on the sale and distribution of the books and — which it did. And in Florida, a lawsuit litigated by the organization seeks to throw out provisions of the state’s “Stop W.O.K.E.” law that infringe on college and university instructors’ long-established academic freedoms.

“These laws have absolutely no relationship to any legitimate pedagogical interest and, in fact, are purely partisan political tools,” said Emerson Sykes, ACLU staff attorney. “We focus on challenging these laws in court.”

To date, legislation limiting classroom discussion of race and gender has been proposed in 42 states and adopted in 17, according to an . Many outlaw “divisive” topics and lessons that cause students to “​​feel discomfort, guilt, anguish” on account of their race or gender. Some explicitly ban the teaching of critical race theory, a graduate-level scholarly framework examining how racism is embedded in American institutions. The term has become a catch-all many Republicans use to describe teachings about systemic racism.

Right-wing, mostly white parent groups such as and have pushed for the bills, which have been supported almost exclusively by conservative politicians. Those who favor the restrictions broadly argue that classroom teachings about race can serve to divide students and give them a pessimistic view of the country’s history. They contend LGBTQ material can make students vulnerable to sexual predation, though those claims , and should be under the purview of parents, not schools.

Simultaneous moves to ban books have also spread in response to parent activism. With more than in schools and libraries from January through August, 2022 is on track to surpass 2021’s count, which was already “the highest number of attempted book bans since we began compiling these lists 20 years ago,” ALA President Patricia Wong said in an April .

So far, the ACLU has challenged classroom censorship efforts in 10 states, including three lawsuits against rules limiting teachings on race and gender. In its more than 100 years of operation, the organization’s have extended across all political ideologies, including defending the rights of the KKK and Nazis to express their views peacefully. 

The number of challenges to anti-CRT laws could soon increase, said Sykes,

“We are actively tracking and considering litigation in multiple states at the moment.”

Here’s a nationwide look at what has played out so far:

Oklahoma

In October 2021, the ACLU and affiliate organizations filed a lawsuit, BERT v. O’Connor, challenging a statewide bill that restricts public school instruction on race and gender. As a result of the law’s approval, according to the ACLU, school districts in the state have told teachers to avoid using terms such as “diversity” and “white privilege” in their classrooms, and have removed , and other seminal books from reading lists.

The court’s decision will have ramifications for Tulsa, the state’s second-largest school district, which received a in its accreditation status after the State Board of Education found an implicit bias training it administered was in violation of the state anti-CRT law. The city, which was the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that left hundreds of Black residents dead and over 1,250 homes destroyed, had recently doubled down on teaching the dreadful, long-buried episode. The demotion does not prevent teachers from covering that history, but some fear may lead teachers and school leaders to feel as if they are on thin ice.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is among the 17 states that have passed laws restricting lessons on race and gender. The ACLU’s lawsuit, Mejia v. Edelblut, alleges that the Granite State’s legislation is so vague that it violates the 14th Amendment, because teachers’ innocent misunderstandings can place their jobs in jeopardy. The state chapter of the National Education Association, one of the plaintiffs, said teachers repeatedly voiced they were confused about what they could and could not teach, and were scared of the repercussions for guessing wrong. Letters to the state asking for clarification, the ACLU says, went unanswered.

Florida

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Florida’s Stop W.O.K.E. Act in April, tamping down on teachers’ and employers’ ability to hold discussions related to race and gender. “We will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces,” DeSantis said.

But the law has already run into legal difficulties. In August, a federal judge placed an injunction on the provisions that apply to the workplace. Now, a group of seven professors and one undergraduate student, represented by the ACLU, have also challenged the law’s restrictions on colleges and universities.

“There is a longstanding history in the Supreme Court and courts across our country of recognizing the freedom of professors, lecturers and educators in higher education to determine what to teach and how to teach it,” said Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program.

Tennessee

In February, after the McMinn County Board of Education decided to remove the graphic novel from the eighth-grade curriculum, the ACLU of Tennessee calling for the board to share the parent complaints it received over the book.

Virginia

After Virginia initiated proceedings to block the sale and distribution of two books, Gender Queer and A Court of Mist and Fury, the ACLU and ACLU of Virginia filed a alongside several independent bookstores urging a state court to dismiss the obscenity proceedings against the two works. On Aug. 30, the court followed that recommendation and dismissed the attempted ban.

“The First Amendment is clear — disliking the contents of a book doesn’t mean the government can ban it,” the ACLU on Twitter.

Missouri

A Trump-appointed federal judge denied an ACLU motion for a preliminary injunction against the Wentzville School District’s book ban. The ACLU of Missouri originally filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of two Wentzville students after the school district pulled several books with Black, Hispanic, Asian and LGBTQ main characters from the shelves of its libraries. The lawsuit sought to temporarily halt the district’s book review policy. A trial on whether to permanently ban the district from enforcing that policy is .

Montana

The ACLU of Montana in February filed a public records request after officials in Kalispell, Montana held meetings over whether to ban by Jonathan Evison and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. The board dismissed the first potential ban and has delayed a decision regarding the second. 

Meanwhile, books were left in the Kalispell book drop in early August. Local police investigated and concluded that the books — none of them controversial titles — were mistakenly donated after being used for target practice, but the unnerving incident spurred the resignation of at least two librarians.

Nebraska

In late May, a Nebraska school district three days after the 54-year-old outlet published an LGBTQ-themed edition. The superintendent of Northwest Public Schools, in Grand Island, Nebraska, said the paper’s final issue was not the sole reason for its elimination. But school board Vice President Zach Mader was , saying, “If (taxpayers) read that (issue), they would have been like, ‘Holy cow. What is going on at our school?’”

In response, the ACLU of Nebraska submitted a public records request for all documents and communication records related to the decision scrapping the publication. The district’s legal representatives have said they are currently . The ACLU also sent a letter to the superintendent warning that the move violated students’ constitutional rights and other federal protections.

“The District’s unlawful attempts to quash student journalism and student opinions violate students’ rights to freedom of speech and equal protection under the Nebraska and United States Constitutions,” said the . “We urge the District to immediately remedy these violations [by] reinstat[ing] both the school paper and the journalism program.”

Mississippi

In January, Ridgeland Mayor Gene McGee withheld $110,000 from the town’s public library, giving librarians an ultimatum: get rid of LGBTQ literature or lose operational funds that had been slated for the building. The ACLU of Mississippi in February responded with a warning letter to McGee. “You have no authority to undertake such measures, and your actions are unconstitutional,” staff attorney McKenna Raney-Gray wrote. Following the letter, the funding was delivered to Ridgeland Public Library.

Idaho

In May, the Nampa School District banned 22 books from libraries and classrooms, including by Khaled Hosseini, by Margaret Atwood and by Toni Morrison. Concerned over a potential First Amendment violation and the possibility of bias in the board members’ decision, the ACLU of Idaho in July filed a public records request for all communications related to the board’s adoption of the policy.

“This Supreme Court does not represent Gen Z or the future we imagine for our country,” , the youth-led organization behind the protest, wrote in a press release signed by several other youth-powered groups including and the . 

“Young people are appalled and horrified by the leaked Supreme Court decision to strip all people who can become pregnant of their basic right to choose.”

Hundreds of youth activists rallied outside the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday evening denouncing the leaked majority opinion set to overturn the landmark 1973 decision, which guarantees federal constitutional protection of abortion rights. More protests are planned in cities across the country in the coming weeks, organizers said.

Eve Levenson, who emceed the Thursday event and is a senior at George Washington University, said the rally was meant to send a message to elected officials.

“It was really about making it clear to those in power … how much Generation Z cares about this issue,” she told ����Ӱ��.

Generation Z includes individuals roughly born between 1997 to 2012, or those currently ages 10 to 25. A majority of abortion patients nationwide are , and 37% are 24 or younger.

Organizers estimate that there may have been nearly 1,000 young protesters outside the Supreme Court, Levenson said, some who traveled from as far as New York state. Another 40,000 viewers watched the stream on Twitter and 80,000 watched on TikTok. Many youth who could not make the trek to the nation’s capital are now planning their own local demonstrations, she said.

The rally was “100% Gen Z led,” Levenson explained, including many high school-age organizers. On the evening of May 2, when the leaked draft majority opinion published by revealed that the Supreme Court appears poised to reverse Roe, her group chat of youth organizers exploded, she said. Someone suggested the idea of a rally in front of the Supreme Court and “it kind of just came together really quickly from there,” said the college senior.

“We all felt so galvanized,” added Levenson. “[Young people] are for bodily autonomy, we are for access to abortion, we are for reproductive health care and people are really pissed off to see those things taken away.”

Speaker Soraya Bata, a student at Georgetown University, pointed out that over a dozen states have trigger laws set to immediately ban abortions should Roe fall. Her home state of Florida in April passed a law banning the medical procedures just 15 weeks into pregnancy, replacing a previous rule that allowed abortions within the first 24 weeks. States including Oklahoma and Texas have recently passed similar restrictions.

“Some people won’t even know that they are pregnant at that stage,” said the young leader. “These laws mean that the only people who will have access to abortions are wealthy Americans who can afford to travel out of state.”

Nearly half, 49%, of those who had abortions in 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, were . Another 26% made less than twice the level, meaning 3 in 4 people seeking abortions had little, if any, disposable income.

Addressing the crowd Thursday, Sofia Ongele, a youth activist with , took aim at the underlying logic put forward in the leaked Supreme Court draft.

“Justice Alito’s core argument is that abortion is ‘not deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions,’” she said. “Our nation’s history is marked by genocide, slavery [and] classism. … We owe it to our ancestors to fight for a better world than they had.”

Contraception, the young speaker explained, saved her life. In 2018, she received an emergency blood transfusion after her periods caused extreme anemia. Since then, she has used hormonal birth control to regulate her cycle.

“To stay alive, I had to have complete control over my body,” said Ongele. “Should anyone infringe on those rights, my health and safety would immediately be threatened.”

Though many of the organizations behind the rally self-identify as nonpartisan, several speakers implied there would be political ramifications for officials who oppose policy measures to protect reproductive rights, along with other issues such as addressing climate change, LBGTQ rights and health equity. The young protesters were by Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who ​​is running for re-election in a Georgia race that could determine whether Democrats maintain control of the Senate.

“Our politicians work for us,” said Melissa Altschiller, an organizer with March for Our Lives. “If they continue to make decisions about our bodies, we will continue to make decisions about their jobs.”

Roughly two-thirds of 18- to 24-year old voters in the 2020 presidential election voted for Joe Biden, NBC revealed — 11 percentage points more than any other age group. Between Generation Z and Millennials, who on many social issues, are eligible to vote in the 2022 election cycle. 

“I think we’re going to see young people continuing to organize around this going forward,” said Levenson.